Sky Broadband firmware update is breaking people’s routers

Some Sky Broadband customers are struggling with internet outages after an over-the-air firmware update sent to routers reportedly bricked some of them.

According to a report from The Register, broadband hubs will be rendered useless by the update, if they are not set to use Sky’s default choice of DNS. The company is promising exasperated customers a rollback or a fix for the problem, but it is not thought out that will arrive until later this week.

In the meantime, Sky Broadband customers are taking to the company’s support website in order to register their displease at days without internet access.

One reader, who wished to remain anonymous, contacted The Reg claiming Sky had informed them that it would take up to eight days to fix the problem. The user wrote:

I was advised that Sky had uploaded a firmware update to my hub overnight which caused issues for anyone who might have set up a third party DNS server on their Sky Hub rather than using the default DNS server. This means that I now had a pretty stroppy brick instead of a useful broadband hub. In fact, it was so bad that I couldn’t even log into the Hub itself to fix the problem or factory reset it). What Sky did was to release some very poorly tested code to the public meaning that they have effectively broken my internet service, through no fault of mine.

I rang back this morning to be told that I need to give them between 3 and 8 days to get back with a fix (the extra time is to allow them to investigate further). I guess their “let’s just back it out” plan didn’t work how they expected…

As for Sky, a company spokesperson said the update was supposed to bring support for forthcoming features, and that those wishing to customise their DNS face a long wait for the rollback.

The spokesperson wrote: “Our latest firmware update is designed to support new, exciting features coming to Sky Broadband soon. If customers wish to continue using a third party DNS server, they can request a roll-back to the previous firmware which can take up to 7 days however customers will still be able to access the internet using Sky DNS servers throughout this time.”

Have you been affected by Sky’s firmware rollout? Should the company have done a better job of warning users before sending it out? Let us know @TrustedReviews on Twitter.

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